


Psychologically Disturbed

by Zinnith



Category: Sherlock Holmes (2009)
Genre: Angst, Community: sherlockkink, Friendship, Gen, Sleep Deprivation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-15
Updated: 2010-05-15
Packaged: 2017-10-09 11:17:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/86702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zinnith/pseuds/Zinnith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the prison yard, Holmes sleeps. Watson doesn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Psychologically Disturbed

**Author's Note:**

> For sherlockkink and the prompt: _centered around the prison scene, when Watson is all *FUME* but STILL lets Holmes sleep on his shoulder all night long._

You can't sleep. It's not for lack of trying - at this point you're utterly exhausted and would like nothing more than to close your eyes and let the world fall away for a while, but you simply can't. Instead you revise your notes, over and over again, and you make new ones in the margin. You can discern a pattern, one that you believe has always been there although you have tried very hard not to admit it to yourself. It is a decidedly unhealthy pattern and if you were one of your own patients, you know very well what your verdict would be.

Life with Sherlock Holmes is insanity, nowhere close to a normal life. It's a maze, a trap you willingly walk into, every single time. There simply has to be something wrong with you, or you wouldn't keep doing this.

Holmes is a warm, curiously comfortable weight against your shoulder. You wonder how he can possibly sleep in a place like this, surrounded by crooks and criminals, as if he was safe and sound home in his own bed. The cold and the damp reminds you that your old aches and pains are still there and every time you close your eyes, you see horrific images of what could have been. One moment, one inch and Holmes could have been lying dead on the docks, his skull crushed. If you had not been there...

But you have to get away from this. You just can't let yourself be pulled further into this destructive spiral or you will surely lose your mind. You can't keep following Holmes blindly, leaping off edges without knowing what the ground looks like below. You've had your share of adventure and you're ready to put that part of your life on the shelf and become a proper gentleman, a doctor, a husband. Being Holmes' friend and colleague isn't conductive to any of those things.

If only he wouldn't make it so difficult. If only he was a less brilliant, less fascinating man. If only his smile wasn't so infectious, if his rare displays of affection weren't so appreciated. Sometimes you suspect that your feelings for him are very close to illegal, which is just one more reason for you to get out while you can, before you're so completely ensnared in his net that leaving will be an impossibility.

You close your eyes, breathe, open them again, turn a page in your notebook. The first grey light of dawn filters into the yard. You feel Holmes' head slowly slide off your shoulder and then he starts awake with a grunt.

"I haven't slept all night," you inform him. "Not a wink."

Holmes stretches and yawns and gives you one of those looks and you can't bear to walk away from him, and you know you can't stay, not like this, and you are tired and confused and angry and came far too close to losing him yesterday.

If you had not been there. Yesterday and all the times before that. The times when he throws himself into his work with no regard for his own health and safety. The times when the black moods take him and the Moroccan case in his desk drawer makes more and more frequent appearences.

If you had not been there.

And that is the crux of the matter, for while you are afraid of what he'll do to you if you stay, you are even more afraid of what he'll do to himself when you leave.


End file.
